Longmont crews switch to salt/sand mixture

'Ice Slicer' product runs out; more expected next week

With temperatures hovering around zero degrees, David Buchanan gathered a little frost on his mustache while walking to the bus stop Wednesday morning. (Lewis Geyer / Longmont Times-Call)

Longmont has plenty of ice, but no Ice Slicer — at least for now.

But the city is prepared, even if their method seems a bit retro.

"We switched over to our salt and sand — the traditional mix. The Ice Slicer vendor has run out of inventory," Jeff TerAvest, the city's utility and streets operations and maintenance manager, said Wednesday. The city made the switch from a combination of Ice Slicer and magnesium chloride late Tuesday afternoon, he said.

Redmond Minerals of Redmond, Utah, makes Ice Slicer, an "all-natural, high-performance deicer" made up of 90 percent sodium chloride — salt — and then more than 60 trace minerals, including calcium, iron and manganese, according to the company's website. It touts itself as melting faster and being less corrosive than standard white salt.

Greeley-based EnviroTech Services distributes Ice Slicer outside of Utah. Its territory stretches from Minnesota to Texas to the west coast, according to its vice president, Matt Duran.

"The number of events, the cold weather, the demand has just been very high," Duran said. ""We're 100 percent over what we had delivered at this time last year."

The company has hired trucking companies to bring in its product — something it never does — and contracted out for extra rail cars. But sometimes even that doesn't help.

"We just got notice from the railroad that because of the severe weather in Wyoming it's going to delay movement of the railroads. ... It's too cold to run the trains," Duran said.

TerAvest said he was told Longmont should be getting another shipment of Ice Slicer next week.

"That stuff comes in by rail car from Utah and they're not expecting the rail cars in until next week," he said.

The city's salt/sand mixture is obtained from gravel quarries in the area, and TerAvest said the city will have no problem keeping enough of it on hand.

"(The city) went mostly to almost 100 percent Ice Slicer in '97, so this is the first time we're doing (salt/sand) widespread since I've been doing this, which is about three to four years," TerAvest said.

A City of Longmont snowplow is seen putting down a salt/sand mixture on 23rd Avenue in Longmont on Wednesday. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

Crews were trying to clear some of the main streets and arterials on Wednesday afternoon. The problems on those streets are mainly with the turn lanes and center lanes, he said.

Many side streets continue to be coated with a sheet of ice under the snow that fell Monday night into Tuesday. Those streets have been covered with a combination of ice and snow since last week.

"The tough thing about this storm is we get a nice wet snow, all the side streets get driven down — because we don't plow the side streets — and then we had these frigid cold temperatures, so everything that didn't get plowed turned into a big ice block," TerAvest said.

The city's snow and ice removal plan is available on the city's website at ci.longmont.co.us. Hit the search button near the top of the home page and type in "snow and ice removal plan."

A frigid February so far

Punxsutawney Phil's seeing his shadow on Sunday morning may have foretold six more weeks of winter, but as Longmonters have become aware, there's winter and then there's winter. While December had just eight days when the mercury failed to reach 32 degrees, and January just six, four of the first five days of February failed to hit the freezing mark, according to Times-Call weather consultant Dave Larison.

And while temperatures in December and January were slightly above normal, the young month of February is averaging a whopping 22 degrees below normal.

Wednesday's overnight low was minus-14, according to Larison. Cold — but well off the record low for the date of minus-28 in 1989, Larison said.

Since Dec. 1, 12 days have had low temperatures of zero or below. Normally, over the course of an entire winter, only eight days have a daily low in negative territory, he said.

The forecast is of little consolation to those seeking anything approaching warm: today, a 20 percent chance of snow is predicted with a high of only 11. For Thursday night the National Weather Service is calling for a low of minus-3, and Friday should be mostly cloudy with a high near 24. Saturday's projected high is 28 while — finally — Sunday we crack the freezing mark, with a high of 37.

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